


Something just like this

by WindsOfTime



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Nonbinary Character, Nonbinary Zer0
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-10
Updated: 2019-06-10
Packaged: 2020-04-24 00:46:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19162369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WindsOfTime/pseuds/WindsOfTime
Summary: Rhys and Zer0 adjust to life with each other. It's a work in progress.





	Something just like this

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CheebsyCho](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CheebsyCho/gifts).



> Written as a fill for [two different prompts sent to me on Tumblr](https://yourdragonisinanothercastle.tumblr.com/post/185492963562/if-youre-still-taking-prompts-zer0-trying-to).
> 
> (As an aside, I think Zer0 might be ridiculously pleased that Rhys' name has only one syllable. Very useful for haikus. A+ boyfriend.)

Rhys was tinkering in the garage when the heavy doors started opening. He threw a nervous glance at the wall-mounted turrets — you never knew who would try to invade Atlas’ stronghold, these days — but they didn’t react when a familiar runner came in.

He relaxed, beaming. His relationship with this particular visitor was still pretty new and they didn’t come by nearly as often as he wished they would. He grabbed a rag to wipe his dirty hands and approached the parking vehicle. A lithe figure swung themselves down from the driver seat.

“Hey, good to see you!”

Zer0 turned to him with a start, a bright red **!** appearing on their faceplate. Rhys stopped, surprised by their reaction. That’s when he noticed several things simultaneously: Zer0 was hunched, one hand still braced on the runner’s flank; their suit had an odd shimmer to it; and there was a dark stain around their midsection.

Now, Rhys liked to think that he had gotten used to seeing Zer0 covered in blood and other unsavory fluids. But it was a little different when the stain was surrounding a circular hole in Zer0’s jumpsuit.

“Is that your blood?” he squeaked, the rag dropping from his nerveless fingers. “You got _shot_?”

He hurried forwards, but Zer0 whipped a hand between them.

“Slag!”

So that’s what looked so odd about their suit. Rhys floundered, caught between wanting to touch Zer0 and knowing he should stay away from the poison.

“No need to worry / ‘Tis but a flesh wound, really / I will be fine, Rhys.”

So saying, Zer0 turned and started for the door. Rhys watched them go. Helplessness wasn’t the feeling he usually associated with the opportunity to admire Zer0’s backside. Yet he had spent enough time doing just this that he immediately noticed when their confident gait swayed.

Throwing caution to the wind, he ducked under their shoulder and looped his mechanical arm around their waist. Zer0’s faceplate displayed a sullen **FML**.

“I’m fine,” they insisted.

“Yep, you’re… totally, absolutely fine. Never seen you finer,” Rhys babbled.

The slag was sinking through his clothes. As they weaved through the corridors, it reached his skin and started to make him feel dizzy. Slag wasn’t lethal on its own, but it was pretty damn inconvenient.

“Why didn’t you warn me you were coming? I would have, I dunno, prepared a healing kit or— should I call a doctor?”

“No doctor needed / I run out of Insta-health / One will be enough.”

“Yeugh! Do you know what that shit does to your liver? Or, well, what serves as your liver, I guess. Can’t you use a proper healing kit?”

They made it to the quarters right next to Rhys’, the ones he had given Zer0 in the hope that they would stop by more often. He hadn’t thought they used it much, but when the light came in, it was a soft red instead of the harsh white of the rest of the base, and various guns were scattered over every surface.

“Oh… You settled in, that’s… that’s good,” Rhys said.

Despite the unsettling quantity of lethal objects around, he felt moved. He shook himself out of it.

“Okay okay, we… we need you to get you out of this suit.”

His brain caught up to his mouth. He turned to Zer0. Zer0 turned to him. Their faceplate was unnervingly blank. By contrast, Rhys could feel his face catching fire.

“I— I mean… if you…” he whispered in a dying voice.

“No need to worry /” Zer0 repeated, leaning away from Rhys’ shoulder. “I can take it from this point / Go back to work, Rhys.”

They made for the bathroom. Rhys opened and closed his mouth a couple of times, stricken.

“W-wait!” he said as they were about to close the door.

Zer0 glanced at him. Rhys clutched at his hair in nervousness, then made a face when the slag on his hand got everywhere.

“Look, if you… if you feel uncomfortable having me here, I’ll go. I mean, I get it, we haven’t really… But if you would, if— if you _could_ , I’d like to help. Because, you know. I know you can take care of yourself, I do, but… I _am_ worried, and telling me not to be… that doesn’t really work.”

He wrung his hands and shifted on his feet. Sasha would have probably called his current expression his “puppy-eyed look”.

“So… please?”

Maybe there was some merit to this puppy-eyed thing, because after a few seconds of stubborn immobility, Zer0 plopped down on the bathtub rim, slouching like a sulky teenager. Overjoyed, Rhys hurried inside and went to wash his oil-streaked hands.

“I apologize / I didn’t want you to see / Such a sorry sight.       
Here was closest, but / Thought you’d be in the workshop / That was my mistake.”

Their helmet went ** >_<**. Rhys’ movements slowed.

“You know it’s alright, yeah? I mean, worrying, it’s pretty much part and parcel of caring, and… I care about you… kind of a lot.”

Rhys chuckled nervously. The frustrated face was replaced with a **< 3**.

“I know that what you do is dangerous. You don’t have to hide it from me. I just want to be sure that, at the end of the day, you’re safe. You know?”

Zer0 looked down. They didn’t answer.

“Zer0?” Rhys prompted.

“When you first met me / You thought I was very cool / I am uncool now.”

An entire legion of butterflies took residence in Rhys’ stomach. He dropped to his knees and took Zer0’s hands, grinning like a fool.

“What are you talking about? You’re the coolest! I saw you turn a giant robot invisible. Nobody is cooler than you.”

“… Really?”

“Really. My partner is the coolest in the universe.”

He dropped a kiss on the helmet, his lips buzzing when the display flashed **\0/**.

“Now, come on. Let’s make sure you stop leaking coolness everywhere. My floor isn’t worthy.”

Despite his words, Rhys didn’t move. Zer0 had to be the one to initiate this. And after a moment, they did, reaching for their zipper.

The poison running through their veins made their limbs stiff. Rhys had to assist them with peeling the tight suit away from their torso and arms, heart hammering in his ribcage all the while. Everywhere the cloth parted, it revealed off-white chitinous plates protecting Zer0’s organs. Skin several shades darker than Rhys’ peeked in between, taut over lean muscle. He couldn’t help but wonder. What would it feel like under his fingertips? Would Zer0 feel the contact? What about the plates, where they sensitive at all? He bit his lip, trying unsuccessfully to shove these thoughts back in the dark closet from which they had come. Now wasn’t really the time.

The bullet had entered one of the unsheltered skin areas, clipping the edge of the chitin on its way in. As Zer0 had mentioned, the injury had been partially treated, since it was halfway closed and the bleeding was sluggish.

“So…” Rhys said, tentative. “Clean and then bandage it? With an actual healing kit?”

 **> :(** was Zer0’s take on the matter.

“Then you can hang out with me until it’s done healing?” Rhys needled with his most charming smile. (Sasha was of the opinion it was just his goofiest. Sasha was wrong.)

“… Fine.”

Mentally pumping his fist in victory, Rhys dug out the healing kit from under the sink. When he rose to soak a towel, his head spun. He swayed on his feet, and it was only thanks to the hand (bare! Zer0’s bare hand!) that Zer0 planted on the small of his back that he didn’t land on them.

“Whoops! Sorry,” he laughed.

“You’re covered in slag.”

“Yep. That makes two of us. Are you sure that’s okay, by the way? I mean, slag, that Insta-health garbage… we know it’s not lethal to humans, but what about you? Did you have it checked?”

“My physiology / is close enough to humans’ / Slag won’t defeat me.”

That seemed pretty flippant to Rhys, and he would have bet good money that Zer0 had tested slag effects firsthand and never bothered talking to a doctor.

Still, the comment about their physiology was interesting. Rhys had yet to learn what Zer0 _was_ , exactly. The only time he had gathered the courage to ask, Zer0 had just stared at him until he changed the subject. He could even count on the fingers of one hand the number of times Zer0 had taken off their helmet in his presence. But here they were, willingly letting him see what lay underneath their suit. That was progress, right?

Hands shaking a little, Rhys reverently cleaned the wound and pressed a self-sealing bandage to it. The skin was warm and dry under his fingers. A muscle clenched at his contact.

Rhys swallowed against a suddenly parched throat.

“Alright. You… you should take a shower, now. Get rid of that slag. You got a spare suit here? I can get it for you. Or I can lend you some of my clothes while your suit is in the laundry. This place is too ancient to have been equipped with a Quick Change, you know, so we have to do this the old-fashioned way, haha…”

Rhys was aware that he was babbling, but that had never stopped him before.

What _could_ stop him, however, turned out to be the sight of Zer0 getting up and dropping the rest of their suit around their feet. Rhys’ torrent of words veered off course like a train jumping off its rails to pile up in a big fiery explosion. The explosion being Rhys choking on his tongue. He turned away, beet-red at least partly because of his coughing fit. A hollow thunk announced that Zer0’s helmet had just joined the rest of their clothes on the floor.

“Right,” Rhys managed to say. “I’ll just…”

Still kneeling next to the bathtub, he made an aborted motion toward the door.

“You too,” said Zer0.

Their voice sounded different without the helmet, less distant, rougher. Rhys stopped.

“… Come again?”

A four-fingered hand closed around the back of his collar.

“You need a shower too.”

“Oh… oh, okay,” Rhys said in a reedy voice as Zer0 leaned over his shoulder to undo his vest buttons.

He was now so red he was threatening to jump out of the colour wheel entirely, but that didn’t stop his blood from migrating south. He had _not_ expected that.

An outside party might have said that his relationship with Zer0 was usually moving at a glacial pace. But Rhys was fine with it, absolutely fine. He was already ecstatic to have Zer0’s trust and companionship, and if sometimes he yearned for something a little more physical, well, he could be patient.

But now it turned out he no longer had to be, and— and that was great! Right? Yep, really great. He was a hot-blooded young man, he was definitely ready for this. No way this was going too fast for him. Pfft, nerves? What nerves? He had absolutely zero nerves.

So he let Zer0 tug his shirt from his shoulders and, taking a deep breath, rose to his feet and reached for his belt…

… and woke up collapsed against Zer0. His bare chest was pressed against smooth warm chitin, his chin nestled in the crook of their neck. A strong arm was clamped around his waist, holding him upright.

“Oh. I, uh, I fainted.”

“Yes,” Zer0 said. Despite their monotone, Rhys could swear he would have been the recipient of a jaunty **:D** if they had been wearing their helmet.

“Right. Because slag. Right.”

They patted his back in commiseration.

“Poor Rhys, so fragile / I appreciate your care, but / let’s get you cleaned up.”

“… Right.”

What he had planned to be some sexy stripping turned out to involve him clutching the counter to steady his vertigo while Zer0 divested him off his pants.

It should have been mortifying. But as Zer0 tucked the both of them under the warm spray, Rhys couldn’t help but chuckle.

He stood there, leaning half on the tiled wall and half on his partner, letting the poison wash away from his skin, and felt pretty okay with life. Zero was looking him up and down, not particularly shy with their observation of the naked human body. Emboldened, Rhys let his attention wander too, admiring the way water wrapped around lithe limbs and shone on bare skin.

Their eyes met. Zer0’s crinkled in mirth.

“Hey,” Rhys said.

“Hello.”

Their foreheads touched and held.

Yeah, Rhys thought, closing his eyes. Life was good.


End file.
